Page 10 of Bloody Lace

“You’re not going to go see them personally?” I narrow my eyes at him. “Why am I getting the special treatment?” In the back of my head, I have a creeping suspicion why. Last year’s party is all coming back to me, and I remember the way Dimitri touched me. The way he looked at me. The disappointment in his eyes when I told him no and walked away.

“I want to help.” He looks around the room, taking in everything I’ve been looking at for the last half-hour, since the flames were put out and the fire department left. The burned clothing, the charred furniture and mannequins, the destroyed papers and records and patterns. My chest squeezes so tightly just looking at it that I feel like I can’t breathe. This was everything to me, and now it’s gone. Just like that.

Because someone decided that they wanted to make an example of me.

Anger burns hotly in my chest. “Help?” I shake my head sharply. “This is your fault. They told me about you, and when I refused to have anything to do with it, this happened. This clearly has to do with you?—”

Dimitri nods. “I know.” His voice is taut, and he sounds angry, too. “I’m sorry, Evelyn?—”

“Sorry doesn’t help anything.”

He nods, swallowing hard. I can see wheels turning in his head, that he’s thinking about something, but I can’t imagine what. “This is unacceptable,” he says finally, that cold angerstill threading through his words. As pissed as I am at him, at everything, it is oddly comforting to have someone standing here with me who is angry about it, too. Who is also a target. Dahlia will be incensed when I tell her, but it won’t be the same. She’ll commiserate with me, and she’ll listen, but it won’t be personal to her.

This seems like it’s personal to Dimitri.

“These men sent someone to threaten you. They tried to extort you, and then they burned your shop, along with two other businesses in this area, because they want to send me a message. Iwilldo something about this,” he says sharply. “I will have to discuss with?—”

“Discuss? I thought you said it was your territory. Are you not the one in charge?”

“I’m the heir.” Dimitri runs a hand through his dark blond hair, looking suddenly tired. “My father can be difficult. But Iwilladdress this?—”

“That doesn’t help me now. That doesn’t help with any of this.” I feel tired too, dragged under by a surge of exhaustion as I look around the wreckage again. “It’s all well and good that you can give me the reasons, but you can’t actually do anything about this. You can’t help me now. So just—go, okay? I appreciate you stopping by to look in on your territory, or whatever, but I don’t belong to you, and neither does my shop. I’ve never had anything to do with you, or this—gang war that I’m somehow in the middle of. So if you don’t mind, I’d like to be left alone to figure out how to pick up the pieces.”

Dimitri pauses, drawing his lower lip between his teeth as if he’s deciding whether to say something or not. He looks as if he’s weighing something, which confuses me, and irritates me too. All I want right now is to be left alone. I want to call my best friend, and I want to cry. And this man, handsome as he is, is rapidly wearing out his welcome.

“I can help you,” he says finally, and his gaze catches mine, a sudden intensity in his blue eyes that pins me like a butterfly to a corkboard. “And you can help me, too. If you agree.”

“Ican helpyou?” I snort, shaking my head. “I don’t think I’m in much of a position to help anyone right now. And truthfully, I don’t think I want to. You have a lot of nerve, actually, asking me to help you, when?—”

“You haven’t heard my offer.” His gaze is still holding mine, unrelenting, and I let out a sigh as I rub my hands over my face. My mascara is long since cried off, so nothing to worry about there.

“Fine.” I look at him tiredly. “What is it?”

“Marry me.”

For a second, I’m not sure I’ve heard him right. I study his face for signs of a joke, but other than the smallest twitch at the corners of his mouth, he looks deadly serious.

“This isn’t funny,” I bite out, but Dimitri doesn’t falter.

“I’m not joking.”

Impatience pushes its way to the surface, mingling with my exhaustion and anger. “How on earth wouldmarryingyou fucking fix anything?” I snap. “I don’t even know you. I met you once?—”

“---and promptly forgot me.”

“Exactly. An even better reason not tomarryyou.” I look at him as if he’s lost his mind, which clearly, he has. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but?—”

“Not a real marriage,” Dimitri clarifies, and I huff out a sharp breath.

“What?”

“Just listen,” he says, a bit impatiently. “It would be real, in that it would be legal. But between us, we would know the truth.”

“And what truth is that?” My arms tighten over my chest. I don’t know what he’s up to, but I don’t trust any of this.

“That it would be an arrangement that suits us both. Currently, I’m being pushed into an unwanted engagement. You’ve just lost your shop. I can’t convince my father that the marriage isn’t in my best interests, and you—” Dimitri looks around the remains of my boutique again. “I’m just guessing here, but I doubt you have the means to fix this all yourself.”

The comment feels like a jab to the heart, but I somehow manage to avoid letting it show on my face. Or at least—I think I do. “No,” I say quietly. “I don’t know how I’m going to recover from this.”

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